1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a vehicle with a capsule structure of a power unit such as an internal-combustion engine and a motor.
2. Related Art
In the automobile industry, an electric automobile using a power unit including a battery and a motor has been developing in recent years. The motor outputs a driving force by using electric power of an electric generator or a battery. Realizing the practical use of the electric automobile depends on the progress of development. Therefore, now and in the near future, it is hard to imagine that an internal-combustion engine for combusting air-fuel mixture in an engine body is no longer in use in an automobile such as a hybrid automobile.
The internal-combustion engine that outputs a driving force by combusting air-fuel mixture in an engine body has been required to improve the fuel economy performance. To address this, an engine body covered by a capsule structure has been proposed, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-119384. This closed capsule structure can keep the temperature of the engine body for a long time while the engine is stopped, and after that, the engine body which is kept warm can be restarted. The engine body is kept warm and restarted, and therefore it is possible to improve the fuel economy performance compared to when the cooled engine body is restarted. In addition, if the temperature of an electric drive device such as an electric generator, a battery, and a motor is low, the output of the battery is reduced, and therefore the cruising range is decreased. To avoid this problem, the electric drive device such as a battery may also need to be accommodated in the capsule structure.